Special-Needs Spending Soars in L.A. Schools : Education: Costs rose tenfold, while allocation for regular programs dropped 3% from 1967 to 1991, study finds. Some fear average students are being shortchanged.

The coffers of the Los Angeles Unified School District are being drained by the growing cost of educating students with special needs, while spending on other students is declining.

That is the conclusion of a study by a national economic think tank, which reviewed inflation-adjusted financial trends in nine school districts across the country over 24 years, and found that special education spending grew the most dramatically.

Calculated on a per-pupil basis, the amount spent in Los Angeles for regular education programs dropped nearly 3% during the years studied--1967-1991--while the portion set aside for youngsters with disabilities ranging from physical impairments to learning problems rose more than tenfold.

Other outlays that cut into the average $5,923-per-student cost of running the local district included ballooning shares of funding for bilingual education, desegregation programs and subsidized meals.

Although similar trends were identified in the eight other districts--selected by the Economic Policy Institute to present a national microcosm--Los Angeles’ experience was the most extreme.

Project Director Richard Rothstein, a former Los Angeles Unified analyst, said the district is coping with a far more needy student body than others studied.

“Social problems are so much more severe [here] . . . than in the other urban areas we studied,” he said. Besides Los Angeles, the urban districts reviewed were East Baton Rouge, La., and Fall River, Mass.

While education spending rose 61% overall, the report speculated that the spending shift may explain why urban areas have stubbornly low showings on standardized tests: Most of their new money is going toward serving students with special needs--students who do not typically take the tests.

By contrast, most of the suburban districts evaluated experienced moderate but consistent annual increases in regular education spending, while special education and other programs grew a little more gradually.

The findings prompted questions about whether the average student in Los Angeles Unified is getting shortchanged.

“Regular students are squeezed out” in the competition for limited dollars, said school board member David Tokofsky. “The mentality of the system is not for these regular kids. . . . There’s no advocacy for them.”

In addition to regular education, declines also were seen in spending for school maintenance and administration.

Rothstein emphasized that the spending increases in some programs cannot be automatically blamed for decreases in others because so many funding sources are involved. Much of the money spent on such things as special education comes to the districts earmarked specifically for those programs, he said.

Yet previous studies have shown that supplemental funding for the special programs--many of them mandated by state or federal law or dictated by court ruling--has not kept pace with their cost, forcing districts to delve ever deeper into their general funds.

Teachers find that trend demoralizing, according to union President Helen Bernstein.

“An awful lot of what’s happening for children with special needs is actually necessary because they do have special needs,” Bernstein said. But teachers feel the sting when their districts find the money for those special needs by raising class size, reducing supply allowances and cutting teachers’ salaries, she said.

The Economic Policy Institute study found that forces far outside a district’s control--including waves of immigrant children and the state’s economic recession--have dramatically changed students and their needs, but shifting education philosophies and priorities also contributed.

Currently, for instance, nearly half of Los Angeles Unified’s 640,000 students speak little or no English and about a third come from families on welfare.

About 10% are eligible to receive special education services, ranging from tutorial assistance in a regular classroom to publicly funded placement in high-priced private schools.

“Nobody has the kind of population we have in this district, not anywhere in the country,” said Los Angeles Unified Supt. Sid Thompson. “And we feel we have a responsibility to these kids, we really do. But it does cost money.”

Special education costs rose during the period studied for a variety of reasons, Rothstein said. In the 1960s, many of the students now taught in special education programs were either kept home or housed in state-funded institutions. Some--suffering from serious birth defects--may not previously have survived to school age. Others bear the physical and mental scars of growing drug use among poor mothers.

Public education administrators also became more tolerant over the years, striving to find ways to continue to teach previously excluded groups such as pregnant teen-agers, young mothers and former dropouts. The cost of that quest was reflected in increases in alternative education support during the study years.

“Those are kids who were kicked out of school in 1967,” Rothstein said.